Independent 30: Jokers to the Right
by Aadler
Summary: A gathering in the middle of nowhere, and a puzzle to consider.


**Jokers to the Right**  
by Aadler  
 **Copyright December 2018**

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Disclaimer: Characters from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ are property of  
Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

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Season: between Fourth and Fifth ( _Buffy_ )  
Spoiler(s): "Restless" (S4-22, _Buffy_ ), "To Shanshu in L.A." (S1-22, _Angel_ )  
This story is a remix (done for Round 8 of the Circle of Friends Remix) of "the Y Chromosome", by SRoni.

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 _She hung suspended in emptiness, the sun-glare from the skylight full in her face and preventing her from seeing anything else in the unlit interior. She was so closely swaddled that she could barely move; she could flex her body somewhat, even attempt to fling herself one way or another, but the force of each attempt was attenuated and nullified by the cords holding her. Additionally, whoever had wrapped her had understood human physiology, securing her limbs at angles that made it impossible for her to get the leverage that would allow her to bring her vast strength to bear. She tried anyway, heaving and straining, and every now and then would be rewarded with the tiny_ **tic** _sound that meant another fiber somewhere had broken._

 _She had been here for what felt like forever but (a cool matter-of-fact part of her reported) was probably around four hours. At this rate, it would take her days to break loose. She didn't expect to be left unattended for anywhere near that long. All the same, she kept at it. Something to do, and infinitely preferable to the alternative._

 _Stopping would mean surrender._

 _Surrender would mean she was beaten._

 _She wasn't beaten._

 _She threw everything she could into forcing her arms away from her body, got the sound from one side indicating she had made yet another infinitesimal increment of headway._

 _They couldn't hold her. Nobody could hold her, not like this. They wanted her for something, and sooner or later they'd come to try and follow that out. Once they did, something somewhere would give her an opening, and just one chance was all she needed._

 _The time would come, and she would seize whatever opportunity presented itself. Once she was loose, some people were going to be sorry._ **All** _of them, if she had anything to say about it._

 _Her body exploded into a spasm of total effort, every part of her straining for release. No sound came to her this time, but it didn't matter, she knew she had put enough stress on her bindings to do damage that she would continue to add to._

 _Nothing —_ **nothing** _— could hold out for as long as she could keep fighting it._

~ – ~ – ~

The building had once been one of the small support structures for a regional airport. As the community shrank and air traffic dwindled, the airfield had gradually restricted itself to mainly private flights, and one of the hangars had been repurposed into a museum of local aviation history. This was an office for administering that museum, but currently serving as a temporary headquarters for an entirely different enterprise.

The office wasn't especially cramped, but it wasn't large, either, and Riley _was_ large and seemed inclined to pace. "The thing that gets to me," he was already saying as the outer door closed, "is when I keep being reminded that we're the _normal_ ones."

"Huh," Oz said. He tilted his head to one side, considering. "New thought."

"I'm not sure I understand." Wesley regarded them both with a slightly quizzical expression. "That was part of my long-term upbringing: that the Slayer was a supernatural entity, and it was the responsibility of ordinary humans to channel her drives into productive service."

"Sure," Riley answered. "But did you really _think_ of yourselves as ordinary?" He shook his head. "I mean, look at me: I've basically been a superstar my whole life, stronger and faster and smarter than anybody around me, the winner at everything I ever tried. I _turned down_ the Green Berets to go for the slot at the Initiative, and had to out-perform other Green Berets to make the cut. I fought demons, and I beat them. The guys I wound up with? we were the best of the best of the best of the best, and I was the best of _them."_ He sighed. "And then I find out that the Slayer, this mythical bogeyman demons use to scare each other, is not just real but is a teenaged girl … and you know what? Compared to her, I _am_ ordinary." He shook his head again. "Just takes some getting used to, is what I'm saying. And I keep forgetting it, and then something — like this — jumps up and smacks me in the face with it all over again."

"I see," Wesley said, nodding. "Yes, I believe I grasp your meaning. In retrospect, there was an … underlying arrogance among the Watchers, something so fundamentally taken for granted that it was, essentially, unnoticeable to us. We were the guardians of humanity, and the Slayer was our most useful tool." He sat at the small table placed next to the door of the office, and peered through the curtained window toward the entrance of the converted hangar. "The brevity of a Slayer's life meant she _couldn't_ acquire the necessary level of education, so we had to supply it. And the Slayers never lasted, which meant the Watchers had to be the enduring framework, with each new Chosen One slotted into her proper function once her abilities manifested." He made a vague, distracted gesture. "The result was that we arrogated to ourselves dominion over that which it was our sworn duty to support. It was disconcerting, on coming to Sunnydale, to encounter a Slayer for whom that dominion was, apparently, a comical fiction." His smile, while small and regretful, appeared to hold an actual measure of humor. "She didn't even reject it, she simply showed no awareness of any reality behind the theory, and reacted with irritation — and, I suspect, some amusement — at my attempts to exercise that which I had never in fact possessed."

"Your ego deflates fast when you start to see what a Slayer really amounts to," Riley agreed gloomily.

"Unuestionably," Wesley said. "It isn't even that we suffer by comparison: it's the moment when it becomes clear that, where Slayers are concerned, there IS no comparison, or any real semblance of one."

Oz had been nodding absently as they spoke, taking it in. Now he said, "Yeah, I don't know. For you guys, it may have been about ego — like, always pushing to beat your personal best, or even just measure up — but it was never that way for me. I did okay with my life, and okay was good enough." He shrugged. "My deal was, I was weird. The offbeat guy, the quirky one. Didn't get my identity all bound up in it or anything, but it was definitely the way I saw myself. Comfortable, you know? Made sense. Then the curtains started being pulled back, and … well, after just so much of that, I couldn't help seeing that the 'weird' scale went up so far, I didn't even show on the meter. That … well, that took some readjusting."

Riley gave him a doubtful look. "I'd say you managed to pick up a little extra 'weird' for yourself along the way."

"Maybe," Oz said. "But even there, the wolf isn't _me,_ it's just something that happens that I have to deal with. The me that's me, that guy's still fighting it out with E-flat diminished ninth."

"All the same," Wesley observed, "you are no longer 'merely' baseline human. The change may be unwelcome, and accompanied by pronounced disadvantages, but it is a reality all the same."

"And you can do spells when you have the right ingredients on hand," Oz answered. He nodded to Riley. "And I heard about the super-soldier boost you got for a while there. When it comes right down to it, though … yeah, we're the normal ones."

"Perhaps this is how it always should have been, ideally." Wesley spoke slowly, as if working out the idea as he went. "Perhaps the Slayer was always supposed to be supported by persons who _recognized_ themselves as support, rather than as … supervisors. Persons who could see that she was greater than they, and thus of primary importance in all their considerations." He looked to the two of them, his eyes troubled. "And I'm not speaking of fairness or deserving, but of pure practicality. Perhaps the … the Slayer we have known, has achieved the successes we have seen entirely _because_ she has been served by those who chose to follow her of their own allegiance."

"Chicken, egg," Oz said. "Is she so great because we're there as backup, or do we step in as backup because she's really that special? But I see what you mean."

"Which brings me back to where I started," Riley said. "I've always been part of a team, one way or another, but I was the _operational_ part of the team, what we call the tip of the spear. Support was a valuable part of what we did, everybody knew that, but in this world _I'm_ the support, and that's definitely a new feeling. Not necessarily a bad feeling, considering what we're supporting, but … really unfamiliar."

"Not everybody gets to be lead guitarist," Oz agreed blandly.

"And some of us clearly are not meant to," Wesley observed. "I am part of another team now, and _not_ the foremost member by several removes; yet the 'lesser' role in which I find myself does more good, and gives me more sense of pride and achievement, than I ever found in the, em, _theoretical_ leadership position I occupied in Sunnydale."

Riley hadn't even heard of Wesley before Oz introduced the two of them, so he was still getting some sense of the history already taken for granted by the two other men. "Hard to lead when nobody is following?" he offered.

After a frozen moment, Wesley said, "Precisely," with a smile that was only perhaps a _little_ tight. "Now I am a follower myself, or more precisely a colleague of one better suited to leading, which arrangement brings about a result clearly more desirable for all concerned."

"Know the feeling," Riley said. "But it doesn't always sit too well with somebody who's spent his whole life as Batman, and all of a sudden he's demoted to Robin. Or maybe even Alfred." He shook his head forcefully. "Okay, I need to get a grip here, even _I_ can tell I'm starting to sound whiny."

"The necessity of adjustment is more recent for you than for us," Wesley noted mildly. "You're still in-process, and the process will … proceed, at its own pace." He placed one hand over the other on the small table. "We might do well to consider the one who seems to see 'Alfred' as his most fulfilling role."

"Giles?" Oz lifted an eyebrow. "Huh. Interesting."

"Giles?" Riley repeated. "I don't know. I mean, I can see some of it, but he's a lot more involved than that. More like Commissioner Gordon, maybe, if Gordon was _also_ the butler and medic."

"Even so, he operates principally as support, focussing all his efforts toward one he regards as of greater worth than himself." Wesley's eyes seemed to go distant. "He is … a stubborn, prideful man, brilliant and knowing it, with his own brand of arrogance and a dark, violent streak of rebellion —"

"Wait, what?" Riley said. "That's not the Giles I know."

"You and I met a different man," Wesley said crisply. "I was sent to _replace_ him; but I never did, never came close, for he had forged bonds with those around him that I could not hope to equal. My point is that he is all the things I named, yet all those things _still_ are dedicated to one purpose, one person. He has never seen a conflict between his duty to the Council and his duty to the Slayer … except the one time he did, and he chose her." Wesley shook his head. "He is as extraordinary in what he is as she in what she is, yet he _became_ what he is by entirely subordinating himself to her, and he would be the first to insist he could never by any other path have risen as high as he has."

"I …" Riley faltered. "Okay, I don't know him well enough to know if I should agree with you. But … I'll agree that Giles certainly looks like a guy who's doing what he was born to do." He sighed. "More to think about, I guess."

"Yeah," Oz said. "And cheer up, you don't have to stay Robin forever. You might even work your way up to Tonto."

From someone else that might have seemed biting, but Riley laughed. "So that's us, then," he said. "The ordinary guys, the normal humans, falling into our place under something higher than we are. Same-sized fish, much bigger pond."

"Something like that," Oz said, "even if I was thinking more along the lines of roadies to the Stones." He tilted his head to one side, studying the other two men from a slight slant. "You know what, though? We're still missing part of this."

"Ah?" Wesley's eyebrows rose. "How so?"

"Yeah, we're ordinary compared to Buffy, or Willow, or for some of us even to Giles, but we're not really _ordinary_ ordinary." He glanced back and forth between them. "Who do we know who's ordinary compared to _us,_ but still in there giving it everything he's got?"

Riley's reaction was gaping surprise, which quickly became something else, his mouth twisting in a grimace. "Xander. Right. God, the irony just keeps piling up, doesn't it?"

"Indeed," Wesley said, every muscle and vocal tone under rigid control, which only showed that he felt control was needed. "Oh, yes, absolutely."

~ – ~ – ~

Giles stood on the cool darkness of the entryway to the converted hangar, letting himself relax, letting his thoughts fall into order, letting the atmosphere soak into that level of subliminal awareness where his near-unconscious could feed him inspiration in response to the unknown he was about to step forward and meet. Drifts of sunlight cut through gaps in the doorway and leaked around the edges of the drawn-down window shades, dust motes hovering in the lambent beams. The air was dry, stale, but not unpleasant.

He was readying himself. He was putting himself into the proper state of mind to deal with what was ahead of him. He was _not_ stalling … or, if he was, it wasn't from fear but from a confusion thoroughly unfamiliar to him. This was ground he had trod before, yet new and unbroken; this was a task very like one he had carried out already, yet not truly the same; this would, in its way, be someone he _knew_ … yet had never met.

The other men, he judged, were feeling some of the same sense of the uncanny, for certainly none of them had offered to venture here with him. Which he would have declined if they had, for it truly _was_ better that he come in alone, given the circumstances of how the … 'meeting' had been arranged with this pantemporal new arrival. He hadn't been a member of the capturing party, he was closer to neutral, he would — hopefully — present less of a threat.

Hopefully. Theoretically.

 _"I find myself particularly curious about two matters,"_ he had said to them. _"First, it strikes me as, as improbably opportune, that all three of you should have been present for this extraordinary event."_

 _"I don't like coincidences, either,"_ Riley had agreed. _"I know they happen, but I'm always suspicious of them … and, yeah, this one really did stack 'em up. It does all seem to be legit, though."_

 _"By which he means that we all seem to have been attracted to this place by the very thing we found here."_ Wesley indicated Riley. _"Captain Finn was following up on earlier reports from his former organization on odd energy readings from this area, extrapolation for which had projected a likely peak today. Mr. Osborne —"_ He glanced toward Oz.

 _"I got itchy,"_ Oz filled in. _"I could kinda feel something out this way, like background noise only … not noise. Mostly I avoid stuff like that, but this time I got curious. So …"_ He shrugged.

 _"I see,"_ Giles said, nodding. _"A plausible reason for each of you to be here; and yet, all that said, still unlikely that all three should arrive, together, precisely in time for the propitious event."_

Riley gave a brief laugh. _"I wouldn't really say 'precise'. I got here yesterday, ran into Oz, and he said he'd been sniffing around for —"_

He broke off, flushing. Oz regarded him with the habitual quirky deadpan expression, and offered mildly, _"For about a week. Didn't show myself to Riley right away — un-fun memories, even though he'd tried to break me out of his buddies' demon-pound — but after a while I could see he was working solo, so I went on and said hello."_ He shrugged. _"Which was good, 'cause he and Wes wouldn't have known each other, and I was able to make intros."_

 _"That was this morning,"_ Wesley interjected. _"And, yes, fortunate even if suspiciously convenient. By pooling our knowledge, we were able to narrow down the probable locus of the projected event threshold."_ He shook his head. _"And it is_ **exceedingly** _unlikely that we could have successfully captured our …"_ He cleared his throat. _"… current guest, without the totality of our combined efforts."_

 _"So it was, indeed, a capture."_ Giles sighed. _"I had hoped I had misunderstood that part."_

Riley raised an eyebrow in Wesley's direction. _"You didn't fill him in?"_

 _"The forceful detention of a Slayer,"_ Wesley said carefully, _"the treatment of one so detained, is a … sensitive issue. We were both cautious as to how to approach the subject; and, since we knew it inevitably_ **would** _have to be dealt with, I suppose we were both willing to let the matter wait until such time as it could no longer be avoided."_

Riley was glancing quizzically from one Watcher to another. _"Is this about that Cruciamentum business?"_ he asked at last.

 _"That, and other related issues,"_ Giles said. To Wesley he added, _"But that brings me to the second matter: how the three of you happened to subdue a Slayer who was, er, disinclined to submit."_

 _"Group effort,"_ Oz replied. _"Plus loads of luck. We could tell in the first part of a second that she was about to attack; I mean, you just_ **knew.** _And Wes —"_ He had stopped, looking that man's way.

 _"I had been reviewing my limited inventory of effectual tools as we approached the projected locus,"_ Wesley said, _"so that was at the forefront of my mind. There was nothing at all that I could have brought to bear quickly enough, but I triggered a ridiculously trivial glamour that made my hands glow; for just a moment, I_ **looked** _like a threat, which served as a very brief distraction. Captain Finn?"_

 _"Yeah,"_ Riley said, nodding. _"While our Slayer was charging at Wes, I got off a taser shot. Hit a large muscle mass, which was good for us, and cranked out a demon-strength charge. Then Oz did his bit."_

Giles had no doubt that the surprise had shown in his face, for Oz had smiled. _"Tranquilizer dart,"_ he explained. _"I still keep some handy, in case … well, in case I run into any kin who haven't learned my meditation tricks. Wasn't any time to get a gun ready, so I just jumped in and jabbed into what I could reach. Musta hit right, 'cause —"_ He smacked his hands together. **"— down,** _just like that."_

 _"Which bought me a few minutes to administer powdered_ **œgeira** _to our captive,"_ Wesley said, _"and then cement its effectiveness with an Yndriptl invocation."_ He made a dismissive gesture. _"None of us could have done it alone; all of us together were only serendipitously sufficient to the task."_

Giles had nodded, but with a small frown. _"Even spell-enhanced, I wouldn't expect_ **œgeira** _to be effective for much over an hour."_

 _"Right,"_ Riley said. _"Which is why I used hundred-mile-an-hour tape, lots and lots of it. And Oz wrapped three cable locks around_ **on top** _of the tape. And said he hoped that would be enough."_

At Giles's inquiring glance, Oz had shrugged. _"You remember when we thought Buffy was possessed, only it turned out her roommate Kathy really_ **was** a _demon? Learned then, ropes won't do the job. Not sure anything would, long-term, but we mainly needed something that would hold till you got here."_

So Giles had taken a 'jumper flight' in response to an urgent communiqué from the three of them, and — after such truncated briefing as the circumstances allowed — come here to meet and assess this unexpected new presence in an existence that was already chaotic to a disorienting degree.

He had heard Riley's statement about 'ordinary' as he closed the office door behind him, for he had paused for a moment outside before proceeding to the repurposed hangar, and the still air had allowed the words to escape, muffled but distinct. It was an interesting thought. Yes, as combatants against the supernatural they were distinctly ordinary. Even Oz, supernatural now himself, was fully human during those times when he made himself part of the endeavor, his lupine alter-ego actually serving as one of the complications he and the rest had to deal with. Riley was almost unnaturally wholesome, albeit so robust and highly-trained as to be close to human peak; Giles and Wesley, of course, even if capable of the odd spell under carefully restricted circumstances, were decidedly humdrum as to their physical capacities. And Xander, of course …

His musings were cut short by that thought, but it triggered another. Why was it always the _men_ who were merely human? Buffy, naturally, was the Slayer, she was the _reason_ for the mission … Willow, however, had started out as a timid genius and computer impresario, but was abruptly showing an alarming talent for witchcraft. Tara had witchcraft in her very bloodline, and Anya, though physically unmagical, had over a millennium of eldritch memory to call upon at need. … Well, there was Cordelia, she had been none-but-human during her time among them; in Los Angeles, however, she had suddenly become a seer, and even though that had been called forth by external influence, Giles's teachings had him suspecting that there must have been _something_ in her already waiting to be triggered.

Could it be that, just as the presence of the Slayer seemed to act as a lure to other supernatural forces in the vicinity, something fundamentally _female_ in her nature served to draw out and enhance any latent capacities in such willing females who chose to linger too closely in her company …?

He shook his head. These maunderings might not be entirely irrelevant, but they were less than fully useful at this specific moment. He drew a final steadying breath, turned the knob of the door before him, and stepped into the larger interior.

The lights were off there as well, but high-set windows from the original design provided him more than enough illumination. Giles stopped, uncertain at first as to what he was seeing, then nodded, smiling, as his eyes sorted it into coherent image and his mind slotted it into comprehensible content. The other three men had apparently decided that their efforts thus far might _not_ prove sufficient, for they had added something more: the tape-cocooned figure hung from bungee cords, dozens of them hooked at all angles to struts projecting from one wall, their elasticity absorbing and dissipating whatever energy the captive Slayer (presuming the capturing party had been correct in their diagnosis _there_ ) might be able to exert. It wouldn't hold, for probably nothing short of death could keep a determined Slayer imprisoned if she were given enough time, but this would be likely to provide _him_ enough time for at least a preliminary assessment and decision on approach.

He walked to her, his steps steady and his nerves mostly so. Her head and upper body were in the sunlight, he was coming in out of the deeper shadows, so he was within a few feet of her before she was able to make him out properly. Her expression lit up with relief and happiness, and she cried, "Giles!" … then her face fell, and she looked at him with disillusionment and even something like bitterness. "No," she said. "No, you're not, are you?"

It was one thing to be told of this, to have the concept introduced to his mind ahead of the fact, but an entirely different matter to actually _see_ it and try to integrate it into his understanding. Not merely something new, but a fundamentally different version of something known. Those features, that voice, the eyes; the way the mouth shaped itself in a smile or twisted in something else, all were stored in years of layered memory and all were something _other_ now. The hair was as thick and unruly as ever, but shoulder-length; the jawline less pronounced, the lips fuller, the shoulders nowhere near as wide; the height seemed to be roughly the same, though her position made judgement difficult, perhaps a _bit_ shorter. All the same, there was no mistaking what he saw before him.

"I am, actually," Giles said, his voice perfectly controlled while everything inside him still struggled for composure. "Clearly not the one you have known, however. Still, I would say that the two of us have a great deal to talk about. By what name do you prefer to be addressed?"

She regarded him with a wariness he automatically sensed held something more; she _knew_ something that she had decided to keep from him, which made for a less than stellar beginning. All the same, she answered readily enough, if perhaps with an undertone of sullenness. "Same as always. Xandra, Xandra Harris."

"Yes," he said. "Of course." Folding chairs were leaned in echelon against the nearest wall, and he stepped over to select one, unfolded it, set it down about four feet from where Xandra hung in her impromptu chrysalis. "Very well," he said, taking a seat and settling himself in for whatever amount of time this endeavor should prove to require. "What shall we discuss first, then?"

 _—_

end

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(So, yeah, there's also a bit of "Phoenix Weeping" here. Surprise!)


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